More on Minter's XBLA game

Everybody's favourite Tempest developer Jeff Minter - a man never seen far from a llama (certainly not in rubbish website copy) - is planning to bring space giraffes to Xbox Live Arcade next year.

As in, a game, which he says most people are calling "Space Giraffe" since it features a giraffe-looking fellow. In space. Shooting things. As you can see in the interesting screenshots posted on his LiveJournal.

Minter recently worked on the Neon visualisations that play in the background when you listen to music on Xbox 360, and fans of the developer's distinctive style will probably find the visuals quite exciting - although Minter himself admits "this game is almost a worst case for screenshots since a lot of the structures are defined over time".

It won't cost much though - just 400 Microsoft points, or £3.40 - and you'll also be able to unlock new effects for Neon that support webcam input while you're playing it. "That's to make up for the fact that MS stiffed me on doing a proper new version of Neon to truly support the cam, and instead have done some half-assed thing where they just superimpose some cam effect layers over existing Neon," he says. "I figure that was a bit rude, so I'll put some proper cam-Neon stuff in the new game by way of schooling."

Back in May, Minter was upbeat about how the game was going. "The last couple of weeks I've had a couple of good points of traction. One being feeling something of how I want the control and firing to be, and the other being today, building in a nice p-system generator to use for the explosions and stuff and initial tests of that being really nice," he wrote at the time. He also said he was working with Llamasoft chum Ivan Zorzin, and said that Neon would be distributed on PC soon.